MigrationWatch: a short history of spin, shoddy statistics and downright dishonesty

MigrationWatch don't 'talk truth to power'. They tell it exactly what it wants to hear: that it's all the fault of the immigrants.

MigrationWatch don’t ‘talk truth to power’. They tell it exactly what it wants to hear: that it’s all the fault of the immigrants

With it being reported yesterday that Sir Andrew Green of MigrationWatch is to receive a peerage, commentators have been queuing up to praise the man who was ‘brave enough to talk about immigration’ etc etc.

It is, apparently, now a sign of unmitigated courage to talk about something the tabloids never shut up about.

So is MigrationWatch – and by extension Sir Andrew – really a brave vessel for truth telling?

Not really.

Here at Left Foot Forward we’ve taken a brief look back at some of the spin, bad statistics and downright dishonesty that MigrationWatch have deployed over the years.

The Migrationwatch report that was ‘simply wrong’ and a ‘stark misapprehension’

‘Immigrants cost Britain £3,000 a year each’, boomed theDaily Telegraph back in March.

“Immigrants have cost the taxpayer more than £22 million a day since the mid-1990s, totting up a bill of more than £140 billion,” it added.

The ‘findings’, if you could call them that, were from a report by MigrationWatch. The report claimed that a paper by the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), which appeared to show that immigration was a net benefit to the UK, actually showed that immigration had cost the British economy hundreds of billions of pounds over 20 years.

The Telegraph had predictably regurgitated a MigrationWatch press release for a story.

The problem was that the MigrationWatch report was based on a ‘stark misapprehension’ and was ‘simply wrong’.

In 2010, MigrationWatch published a report which argued that the UK’s education budget was being stretched beyond capacity due to migration.

The problem was that MigrationWatch ignored the contribution migrants were making to the public purse through things like income tax. As we noted at the time, the evidence suggests that migrants contribute more in taxes than they consume in public benefits or services.

As Ruth Grove-White of the Migrants’ Rights Network pointed out on Left Foot Forward, a graph produced by MigrationWatch, which claimed to represent the ‘Sources of Net Migration’ between 1997 and 2009, appeared to attribute all net migration for this period to non-EU sources. Meanwhile the accompanying text claimed that the ‘overwhelming majority’ of foreign immigrants derived from non-EU sources.

And yet according to the ONS, while in 2009 non-British citizens accounted for 83 per cent of all long-term immigrants to the UK, a third of these migrants were from EU countries.

MigrationWatch also claimed in the same paper that:

“…illegal immigrants could number almost one million.”

This figure was not borne out by independent research from the London School of Economics, which put the figure at approximately 625,000 – too high certainly, but significantly fewer than the MigrationWatch estimate.

Falsely accusing migrants of driving down pay and taking our benefits

In 2013, MigrationWatch published a paper calling on the government to remove the ‘pull’ that attracts immigrants to Britain.

By ‘pull’ they were referring to the UK’s minimum wage and benefits apparently “worth up to five times more than those in Romania and Bulgaria”.

However as was pointed out at the time by Thomas Southern, migrants do not come to the UK for the benefits – nor are they ‘stealing our jobs’. As Southern put it:

And to quote economist and head of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, Jonathan Portes, on wages, EU migrants “don’t appear to have a negative impact on the employment prospects of natives – several different studies have failed to show any link”:

“However, there is some evidence that migration, while having some positive impact on wages overall, might have a small negative impact for the low-paid. But these impacts appear quite small – other factors, like general labour market developments, or the minimum wage, appear to be considerably more important.”

86 Responses to “MigrationWatch: a short history of spin, shoddy statistics and downright dishonesty”

Dave Roberts

Dave Roberts

Stephen

I do not agree. The threat to employment caused by free movement of capital is a far more serious threat. Over the last 35 years it has cost millions of jobs, either not replaced at all, or replaced with low quality, low paying service jobs. I find it frustrating – and frankly deeply hypocritical – that those who rail against immigration have nothing much to say about this apocalypse that has befallen working class jobs.

Please do not pat me on the head and tell me is unimportant. And please do not insult British workers by calling them “crap”. This is what is wrong with the immigration debate as conducted by the right in this country. It is conducted on an wholly spurious and disingenuous premise. It pretends to be defending British workers but is actually conducted for narrow nationalistic reasons. As is demonstrated by your dismissing the destruction of the native car manufacturing jobs in such causal terms. Either you defend British workers or you do not. There is is no middle way.

Cole

Dave Roberts

Calm down, calm down as the scousers used to say. First of all I am a worker having started as an apprentice on the building probably before you were born. Far too many people make the mistake of thinking that people who can write and construct arguments have all been to university.

You are confusing the movement of capital with unproductive industries. There has always been a movement of capital. A good read is “Expulsion: England’s Jewish Solution” by Richard Huscroft concerning the expulsion of the Jews by Edward 1 in 1275. It discusses how Jewish communities, very involved banking and credit were expelled, very largely because of their economic power.

Examples are given of letters of credit issued in various parts of Europe which could be cashed in others. In other words there was a movement of capital eight hundred years ago. Lombard Street is named after the bankers from that part of Europe who established themselves and who moved capital around the known world.

You are talking about profit maximisation by moving or relocating industries to either other parts of a country, another country to take or a different continent to take advantage of particular conditions which is totally different.

Like Leon/Guest you must read what is written. I said 1970s British cars were crap, which they were. obviously you have never driven a Morris Ital or Marina.

Guest

GhostofJimMorrison

Then there’s Unite against Fascism standing shoulder to shoulder with Islamofascist groups; Livingstone and his mate Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who believes all homosexuals should face the death penalty. I’m only speculating, but I imagine his views on Jews and the Holocaust matches that of the EFDD. Read Nick Cohen’s What’s Left for more examples. And if we’re talking about anti-Semitism then the left is hardly innocent in that respect!! And I’m ever so sorry for not replying quicker, but I have a life and a job. And of course I must support them! Obviously! Lol, cretin.

Guest

Guest

So blocking all but the rich from crossing borders, i.e. exactly what you wanted all along.

But you won’t accept harsh tariffs, which would be a real compromise, on all British goods.

The Little Englanders, as you are, try and say “it’ll be fine” when all the evidence is no, it would not be. You magic up trade treaties we don’t have, and wouldn’t have for 5+ years, and which we’d be at a massive disadvantage for.

As ever, you say only your rich are creative and productive, as you dismiss an absolute position as something to “negotiate” over.

GhostofJimMorrison

GhostofJimMorrison

GhostofJimMorrison

Actually, don’t bother. I’ve just had a quick look at your profile and you have a history of speaking utter drivel and using personal insults and offensive language to others. You will get no more replies from me, ever. Goodbye.

Dave Roberts

itdoesntaddup

Governments have been far more downright dishonest on migration data than Migration Watch. Not one of them has attempted to provide a proper explanation for the divergence between NINO data and official IPS/LTIM data – which itself has been subjected to substantial upward historical revision. Of course, although the problem of failing to identify incoming A8 migrants at subsidiary airports (because IPS ignored them) was flagged up no later than 2006, it took until 2009 before anything was actually done about it, and only this year do we finally get some post-hoc attempt to assess the consequences in the migration data. Likewise, we are told that we should ignore students in migration data, because supposedly they’re only here to study. Then the data show that two thirds of them are staying on permanently, legally or otherwise – and of those gaining extensions to stay, few are doing so on the basis of being highly employable, while most are settling on the basis of marriage.

As to the economic benefits of migration, I’d rather rely on Prof Rowthorn than any of the sources cited in this article, most of which do the equivalent of passing off turnover as profit.